The Funeral Makers

by Cathie Pelletier

  “Don’t hold up your signs until I tell you,” she said. “Cora, did you get Becky’s megaphone?”

  “I got it,” said a woman from among the group, “but she wants it back by five o’clock. She’s practicing her cheers for when school starts.”

  Sarah counted heads. Twelve. Girdy Monihan wasn’t there, but Sarah was relieved. Thirteen might bring bad luck. Her mother always used to say, “If your husband has twelve mistresses, he might still come back home. But if he has thirteen, start forwarding his mail. Even decent men have a breaking point.”

  “All right now,” she said to the minimob. “We’ll go in my car, in Winnie’s, and in Martha’s. That’ll be four to a car and enough room for our signs. Drive right in my dooryard behind me and get out. Don’t be afraid. She can’t hurt you.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Emily Hart.

  “What if she has a gun?” asked someone else.

  “She’s got a gun all right,” Sarah said. “Only she don’t fire bullets with it.”

  “What if she won’t come out?” another voice in the crowd asked.

  “She’ll come out,” said Sarah, reaching for the megaphone that had been passed forward to her, “or we’ll smoke her out.”

  “What do we do with her then?” asked Winnie.

  “We pack her stuff into that little communist car of hers and wave good-bye,” said Sarah.

  The three-car posse rolled quietly through Mattagash toward the Albert Pinkham Family Motel, like the funeral procession of an unpopular relative, and pulled into the driveway. Sarah got out first and motioned for the others to get out. She had planned the day well. Albert had left that morning to drive to Watertown and would not be back until after supper. This was the day when the newly formed Mattagash Historical Society had chosen to meet for the past two months. They had gathered in Winnie’s living room to sort over old photos and deeds, drinking coffee and censoring the past people and actions that they felt presented Mattagash in a less than radiant light. What posterity didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  Car doors opened and closed, hats were straightened, dresses smoothed, throats cleared. Sarah moved to the front of the Mattagash Historical Society and held one hand up to speak. At this mistaken clue, signs were hoisted into the air, some spray-painted, others done with nail polish or lipstick or crayons. Wilma Fennelson, who had no children, therefore no crayons, who wore no makeup, therefore no lipstick or nail polish, was nevertheless a good cook, as was any woman worth marrying in Mattagash. Her sign had been done with food coloring and she held it up proudly, a watercolorist at her first exhibit. VIOLET, GO HOME it said in red letters that were done with such a sweet, artistic hand that they might as easily have read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VIOLET.

  Winnie Craft, the most literary of the group, had written a poem: MATTAGASH DON’T NEED THIS TRASH.

  Martha, usually the group clown, held a gold spray-painted sign that said NO STRIPTEASE, PLEASE.

  “No! No! Not yet,” said Sarah, motioning for the signs to go back down. After a rustling among the biblically strong who were picketing the meek there was a reasonable silence. Sarah cleared her throat. Her idol had always been, would always be, Eleanor Roosevelt. Once, when someone told her there was a great resemblance between herself and the former First Lady, especially around the mouth, Sarah stopped dreading her plainness and vowed to do justice to a woman she resembled, not only in physicalities, but in spirit.

  “What we are doing today is historical,” she told the women. “We are cleansing our town for our children and their children. Just like Jesus cleared the temple.” Sarah looked at Winnie and nodded. Winnie took her camera out of her purse and snapped Sarah’s picture.

  “Hold ’em up NOW!” Sarah said, and signs flew like balloons into the air, some white, some brown, some yellow, integrated signs of all colors and shapes living and waving in harmony. Molly Plunkett’s was on gray cardboard that had been the inside of a Tide box. The opposite side read FOR A CLEANER WASH.

  Winnie snapped some candid shots of the protestors, then put her camera away.

  “We’ll go around to her room in single file,” Sarah told her followers. “Then we’ll form into three rows of four each, to look like we’re more than we are.” She thought suddenly of Jesus dividing the loaves of bread and the fishes to feed the multitude. “Maybe he just lined them up right,” she thought.

  Off they went, like a line of chickens behind Sarah Pinkham, around the corner of the Albert Pinkham Family Motel to stand in front of the door to Room 3. The women held their breath. This was it. The time had finally come. It was no longer just idle talk, their mouths full of sandwiches and cake. It was no longer just a few basic tactics jotted down on paper. This was the real McCoy, the first documented confrontation of good versus evil in the history of Mattagash. Who knew what it might lead to? What domino effect could follow their actions that day? Today it was Violet La Forge. Tomorrow it could be the Giffords!

  Sarah lifted her sign that said KEEP MATTAGASH CLEAN!—a leftover from the Fourth of July cleanup campaign that had taken place in 1955, its target being the Gifford outhouse. Little Belle had done such a painstaking job in forming each letter and had spent so many hours on the border alone that Sarah always suspected that was when her eye trouble began. What do doctors know? She had kept the artistic sign in case a cleaning campaign should ever arise again. And now one had. She had given Violet La Forge every opportunity to spare herself this kind of disgrace. Violet La Forge had had ample time to throw her things into that hideous little German car and drive off. But what had she done? Had she appreciated the committee’s kind gesture? No. She had come to Sarah’s door early that morning, clad in her body-hugging leotards, and said, “You won’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll see you at three o’clock.” Sarah had had to sit down for a few minutes before her breathing became regular again, that’s how shocked she was at Violet’s insolence. She very nearly began to hyperventilate, which had only occurred once before when she read a magazine article about FDR that said he had a mistress who was with him when he died. She’d been sitting under the hair dryer at Chez Françoise Hairstyles in Watertown when it happened, and Françoise, who was from Quebec, Canada, and spoke little English, had pulled Sarah out from under the dryer and helped her over to the sofa where she collapsed. All Sarah could think of was poor Eleanor. When you wash and iron a man’s shirt, you like to think you’re the only one who’s going to unbutton it. It was all so nasty. Him a cripple and still chasing women. If he had been Sarah’s husband, by God, she’d have locked the wheels on that chair of his in a second, president or not. It was nothing more than a little whorehouse on wheels. But Lucy Mercer and Violet La Forge were the only two women unscrupulous enough to cause Sarah Pinkham to hyperventilate.

  Violet had until three o’clock to clear out. When Sarah left at noon to go to Winnie’s, there was still no evidence of packing. The eviction signs were ready. The historical society was waiting. At two thirty Sarah and Winnie cruised slowly by the motel and saw Violet’s car still sitting in the driveway, no suitcases inside, no dresses hanging in the backseat.

  “So she’s gonna beat it into the ground, is she? She’s gonna take it down to the wire?” Sarah asked Winnie. “Well, she’s holding a pot full of you-know-what and we’re gonna make it stink.”

  Now they were huddled strategically before the door that held the little plastic number 3. No one spoke. Finally, Sarah moved forward and, glancing back for assurance, knocked loudly.

  “Who is it?” asked a teasing voice from inside. “Is this a knock-knock joke?”

  Sarah rapped louder, incensed at Violet’s flippancy. She felt a difficulty in breathing and asked God to let her hyperventilate later in the privacy of her own home and not during her confrontation with Delilah. Suddenly the door was opened a crack and Sarah looked into one of Violet’s eyes. It was a lovely shade of blue, almost violet. Just like
the magazines said Elizabeth Taylor’s were like. Sarah was taken back at this. She had never known anything personal about Violet the woman before, and now she was looking into the beautiful, almost sad color of her eye, like it was one of the violets that grew on the hillside, knowing it had to be picked sooner or later. Sarah felt suddenly as if she knew Violet La Forge. Or at least knew that Violet was real, no longer the unseen presence at the recent gatherings whose purpose was to decide how to oust her. Violet might have been any woman standing there. Someone’s daughter, sister, mother. Sarah was unable to speak. Her mouth opened and nothing came out. “I have seen the enemy and it is I,” she thought.

  “Look, Mrs. Pinkham,” Violet said so softly that Sarah had to lean forward to catch the words. “Look, I’ve got a good-bye present for you,” and she opened the door for Sarah, who gasped to find Violet naked. Behind her, scrambling for his boots, with a blanket wrapped about his waist, was Albert Pinkham, Proprietor. Sarah covered her mouth. She felt the crowd surge forward, pushing for a better look. Rather than let them see this, rather than feel the shame of a woman with a faithless husband, Sarah Pinkham stepped into the den of iniquity and closed the door behind her.

  “She tricked me,” Albert said. “I swear to God, Sarrie, this was the only time in all these years. I lost my head. She wrote me a note to come visit her before she left.”

  “Seems like everyone’s gettin’ notes these days,” said Violet, sitting cross-legged in her little rocker and stroking her Raggedy Ann’s head.

  “She said she was leaving today and I knew you had your meeting at Winnie’s. She even said to leave my pickup in Dewey’s gravel pit and she’d pick me up in her Volkswagen. She hid my pants. Where are my pants, you bitch?”

  Albert could not stop talking for fear Sarah would start. Violet reached inside a packed suitcase and tossed Albert his pants.

  “I’m sorry, Albert, that it had to be you. But just once in my life I had to fight back,” Violet said.

  Sarah finally spoke, not looking at either Albert or Violet. She was looking at the big Raggedy Ann and thinking about poor little Belle. “The sins of their fathers,” she said.

  “Sarrie, as God is my witness.”

  “You leave God out of this,” Sarah told her husband. “God had nothing to do with this.”

  “Do you want to let the committee in?” Violet asked, hand on the doorknob.

  “No,” said Sarah.

  “It could have been any one of them out there. Any one of their husbands. It was yours because this was your party.”

  “Will you leave now?” Sarah asked and pushed Albert’s hand away. Albert, now dressed, sat helplessly on Violet’s pink bed and flicked his nail clipper up and down.

  “As soon as I can get everything into the car. Take the women away so that Albert can leave.”

  Sarah nodded and heard Albert begin to weep. She almost went to him, but knew she couldn’t. Knew she would never go to him again. In sickness or in health. For richer or poorer. Until death did them part. Albert Pinkham would simply be the man in her wedding picture.

  “She’s leaving. She just wants a few more minutes,” Sarah told the group outside.

  “We made these signs for nothing?” asked Martha.

  “I got this megaphone for nothing?” asked Becky’s mother. The group, like bored Romans, had gotten a taste of blood, had built up a curiosity about the lions.

  “I guess so,” said Sarah, as the Mattagash Historical Society followed her back to their cars.

  On the ride back to Winnie’s the women were quiet, sensing a new development in the Violet La Forge scandal. Wilma Fennelson and Martha Fogarty distinctly heard a man’s voice. Wilma Fennelson distinctly heard Albert Pinkham’s voice. Sarah realized that the women knew already that Albert was inside Violet’s room, or they would figure it out. Life in Mattagash had gone, in ten minutes’ time, from being enjoyable to being unlivable. That’s how things stood in a small town. There were no slopes. Just sudden sharp drops.

  Sarah turned her car in Winnie’s driveway and waited for her passengers to unboard.

  “We’ll call you later,” one said to her. “See you soon,” said another, all of them saying something to her with the same tone Sarah had used so often to outcasts that she recognized it for what it meant: Leave so we can talk about you.

  On the drive back to the Albert Pinkham Family Motel, Sarah wanted to laugh out loud at the irony of it all. But instead, she let tears slide down her face.

  “There’s no starting over in Mattagash,” she thought, “and they never let your children forget, or your grandchildren. You don’t get a second chance here.” And she wondered why they had even bothered to form a historical society when the minds in Mattagash were all bulging museums open to the public year-round, and inherited by those not even born.

  Sarah pulled the car off the side road that fishermen used to drive down to the river. The goldenrod was still yellow along the road but the berries were dead on the bushes, and some of the leaves, after hanging on so long, had finally let go.

  “The leaves will soon be gone,” thought Sarah. “I wonder if the trees start worrying at this time of year? The way a man worries about getting old and losing his hair?”

  It had been a busy day. She had hardly given much thought to the fact that the sign reading WELCOME TO MATTAGASH, POPULATION 456 was no longer true. Marge McKinnon was dead. So was Chester Lee Gifford. But the sign was already wrong. Martha’s grandson had been born in August. And Tim Morse and the wife he met in the Army had just had their first baby. That meant the sign was right again. Two born. Two died. “Poor Marge McKinnon. What a long, lonely life. And Chester Lee. What a short, miserable one,” thought Sarah, realizing now that Chester Lee had suffered all his life from the exclusion, just as she would soon be suffering. For Sarah, it was as if she’d been a member of a wonderful club for years until, one day, a notice arrives in the mail that her membership has been canceled.

  Sarah cried in her car by the road that led to the river, by the dead berries and falling yellow leaves, cried for every soul who had come and gone through Mattagash unhappy. Finally, her eyes swollen, she started the engine and drove slowly home. Violet’s car was gone. On the front step Sarah found the key to Room 3 wrapped inside the note that the committee had written, asking Violet La Forge to leave. “They may as well have written one for me that same night,” Sarah thought.

  Inside, she put some water on to boil. A nice cup of tea would help calm her a bit as she tried to sort the day’s mess out in her mind, as one sorts dirty laundry.

  Sipping on her tea in the comfortable old chair that sat by the oil heater, Sarah thought of Eleanor Roosevelt and how lucky she had been that Lucy Mercer was a shy woman.

  MARGE’S WILL BE DONE: THE PHOENIX RISES FROM THE ASHES

  “Met Marcus Doyle today and I felt like my heart would sprout wings and leave me, like my soul leaving my body. Like an angel fluttering up to heaven.”

  —Marge McKinnon’s diary, 1923

  The subject of the will began as an accident. Sicily and Pearl were having coffee in Marge’s kitchen. It had been decided that Pearl and the girls would move over to Marge’s with Thelma and the menfolk. Pearl could keep an eye on things until the funeral was over and a decision could be made about closing up the old homestead.

  Marvin Sr. and Junior had driven to Watertown to check out the local undertaker, size up his wares, see if he was capable of embalming with the big boys. Sicily and Pearl were deciding whether to wake Marge at her own house or at Sicily’s. Pearl was telling Sicily how people in Portland would think it barbaric to wake a loved one at home.

  “Well, I can’t imagine anyone in Mattagash doing any different even if we did have a funeral home. I know if it was me that had departed, I wouldn’t want my body to be passed around among strangers,” said Sicily. “A loved one should be in their own ho
me, among family and friends, even if they didn’t get along before.”

  “It’ll change up here too,” said Pearl. “You have to give in to change when it comes.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen in Mattagash. Look at old Mrs. Bell. She died from a ruptured appendix because she wouldn’t let the doctor lift up her dress and examine her. She said God and her husband were the only two men who belonged under there. Do you think for one minute she’d let the undertakers strip her?”

  “Funeral directors,” said Pearl, and put a hand to her forehead. There was a headache coming on, she could tell.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sicily. “But even being of a younger generation I couldn’t tolerate sleeping in a strange funeral home, with men I don’t even know.”

  “Sicily, do you think funeral directors are rakes or something? Do you think they get dead women down in the basement to take advantage of them?”

  Sicily knew she had pushed too far. She kept forgetting that Pearl was associated with that profession by marriage. When Marvin Sr. and Junior left the house, taking their funerary smell with them, she thought of Pearl as just another housewife.

  “Do you remember,” Sicily said, hoping to iron out the waves she had created by mentioning undertakers, “do you remember when old Mary McMahon waked her husband Ben?”

  “God, yes!” said Pearl. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “We were just little kids. Remember how Daddy dragged us along? And remember how dark it was that night? And we went running on down the road ahead of Daddy?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Pearl. “And Mary had Ben propped up in his casket right in the window for everybody to see?”

  “Just like the coffin was a flower box or something!”

  “And she had a gas lamp flickering at each end of the coffin! He was all lit up from head to foot. Palmer Mack called him the Titanic. Do you remember old Palmer with only one leg? He used to tell people he lost it in The Big One so they’d buy him free drinks, but a tree fell on it and smashed it.” Pearl was glad to remember some things about Mattagash with humor. It had taken years to let go of the feeling she had in regards to her old hometown, a feeling of anger and resentment.